Another rush day, but with better results. Plus, yay, my first win of the season. I can only go up from here! Unless, of course, I sink back down. That’s another possibility, now that I think about it.
1. What is the stage name of this pop music superstar?
I don’t think so. I’d have been biting my fingernails trying to identify most American pop singers. There’s no way I’m going to recognize Rain, a very famous person from South Korea.
2. The type of object in this photograph was, for most of its useful existence, colloquially named after what company?
A merciful gimme in a season that to date has not offered a lot of them. IBM.
3. Zeus Carver, Matt Farrell, General Ramon Esperanza, and Hans Gruber are all characters from what popular series of films?
A bewilderingly easy gimme in a season that to date has had hardly any of them. Die Hard.
4. The singer and actress Mary Martin won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical three times in her career, in 1950, 1955, and 1960. Name any two of the three shows for which she was honored.
Oh, good, theater! My comfortable teddy bear of a category! Mary Martin, sure… she was the star of Peter Pan before they decided to exclusively cast gymnasts in the role. So that’s one. And the other is… um…
Hmm.
My first thought was the not-exactly-well-known musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown, but I rejected this. Annie Get Your Gun? I know I’ve heard a soundtrack album with Ms. Martin singing on it. But that musical is closely tied to Ethel Merman, who must have been the original Broadway star, which means Mary couldn’t have won the Tony for it. She must have been in a revival or something.
Carousel? Maybe… didn’t like it… couldn’t summon up the memory of hearing her on the soundtrack.
Oh! Finally, The Sound of Music dawns on me and I am saved. South Pacific would have worked, too.
I knew even as I was pondering all this that I was going to receive zero points for the question, but it’s the principle of the thing.
5. Who was the NBA’s scoring leader for the recently concluded 2011-12 regular season (his third consecutive scoring title)?
Basketball. Why did it have to be basketball?
Oddly enough, a couple of weeks ago I was flipping through an old Sports Illustrated while my son was getting a haircut, and the cover story was about the rivalry between Lebron James, whose name I was able to remember, and… and another player whose name I had lost. Well, at least with Lebron James, I had an authentic hoops player to put into that blank, so that’s what I did. The correct answer: Kevin Durant, who was in fact the other player featured in that article. Ah well.
6. Some days are born ugly. From the very first light they are no damn good whatever the weather, and everybody knows it. This is the first line of a chapter called ‘Lousy Wednesday’ in a 1954 novel by John Steinbeck. What day comes next, which precedes Waiting Friday, and is the title of the book itself?
Somehow I knew the title of this book, and that knowledge was reinforced when I found myself looking at Steinbeck’s Wikipedia page only two or three days ago. My father had just finished The Grapes of Wrath and loved it, and our discussion sent me to Wikiland to read something about the guy. I assume next week we’ll see a question about the songwriter Paul Williams, as I was reading his Wiki page this morning.
Nonetheless, not a gimme. It took some time groping around in the mental fog until I had the right title: Sweet Thursday.
1. Rain is one of the faux nemeses of Stephen Colbert. While I do not recognize his face, it seemed like a reasonable guess. It was!
2. Guessed IBM since it was a computer punchcard. Got lucky.
3. Only recognized Hans Gruber, but that was enough.
4. Immediately got Peter Pan, couldn’t think of one of the others.
5. Basketball is awesome. Easy.
6. I got the Thursday part?
Somehow I am tops in my rundle. This will not last.
At least reading this blog gave me perfect defense.
1. Who?
2. This can’t be IBM. IBM is too easy, right? Everyone thinks this is IBM but it’s not, right? What else could it be…?
3. I have seen these movies and forgotten everyone’s names.
4. I won’t get this, my opponent knows I won’t get this, my opponent will get this, move on….
5. Knew Lebron James, did not know this guy.
6. Partial credit for knowing Thursday!
My goal is to stay out of demotion range and it appears that it will take some work this season.
Oh! I never made the connection between WestJ and the Jessamyn who comments here.
1. I have never heard any music by Rain; the reason I was pretty sure of his identity was that his fans often flood online polls with votes for him. This made it a little hard to figure out appropriate defense; we have stats for “pop music,” but not for “paying attention to meaningless online polls.” I went with the 3.
2. When I was growing up, my dad was a COBOL programmer (he declined to come out of retirement for the millennium bug, but easily could have). A stack of these cards were always by the phone in our house–we used them as (lightly perforated) scratch paper. The problem was we always called them “cards,” or sometimes “punchcards.” I had to logic this one out, figuring that IBM was the company most likely to be associated with them by the general public.
3. Wouldn’t have gotten this without Zeus Carver, the Samuel L. Jackson role (and might not have gotten that if I hadn’t read the recent NYTM cover story on him). But one’s enough.
4. I was able to name exactly two Mary Martin roles: South Pacific and The Sound of Music. Happily, the fame of those performances corresponded to the awards. Fun fact that may be old news to you, but I didn’t know until I looked her up after the match: she was Larry Hagman’s mom.
5. There were some stories on the final day of the season about this: Kobe Bryant was within striking distance (he needed 38 points to win the title) and chose to sit out instead. Anyway, I knew Durant, and thought that the three-consecutive-times part of the question would make it a bit easier, but apparently it was a tough one for most people.
6. Never heard of it. I went with Thank God It’s Thursday.
My opponent was GrayI, who was also in my rookie rundle. He has proven to be an extremely strong player, and in most ways my LL superior. But my 7(5)-2(2) win was the second time I’ve beaten him in two seasons, which I find both lucky and astonishing.
I thought I had a chance here, since though my opponent was undefeated these were wedlock categories for him and decent ones for me. He remains undefeated, as it was yet another tie, though better defense could have won it for me as I had three correct to his two.
1) ohhh, was on the edge of my mind, but couldnt come up with his name. My opponent, also weak in pop music, got it and bagged 3 points. I had no idea about the Colbert connection or would have scored this lower.
2) recognized it as a punchcard, and could only guess IBM. This got two for me and zip for my opponent.
3) got it from Hans Gruber, for a point.
4) got this one easily, which my opponent naturally gave me zero for.
Lebron James and Freaky Thursday were both wrong.
1. Another “Who?” from this corner. I appreciate the posts on this blog for LL, among other reasons, because it gives me an idea why we were supposed to know an answer sometimes.
2. Boy, did I go off into the weeds for a while. I started off trying to think of tech companies from back in the day, and then I thought, ‘But wait! They’re out to get us this season, it seems! Might they be named after some brand of Swiss cheese or player piano rolls?” and wandered off on that wild goose chase for a while before settling down and going with the obvious.
3. Also got it from Zeus Carver, confirmed by Hans Gruber. There have been two moments in my left when I have been the only person laughing inappropriately in a movie theatre. Once was during Die Hard with a Vengeance when they made the two characters implement the 3-and-5-gallon-jug problem. The other was during the fun-with-bondage movie Exit to Eden (I know, I know) during some establishing shots of the island. There was a song from the 80′s playing, one I was sure I knew and couldn’t place. When I realized it was “Slave to Love” by Bryan Ferry, I couldn’t contain myself.
4. Peter Pan was the obvious one (and if she hadn’t won for that, there was no hope, so…) but I had nothing for the other one. I literally picked the name of any musical out of the air and scored a bulls-eye with South Pacific. I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw I got the question.
5. Well, if he’s been the scoring leader for three years how obscure could he be? …Who?
6. Not “Maundy Thursday”, either.
If I hadn’t guessed perfectly on Q4 I’d've tied for the third day running. It’s kind of a cheap win, but I’ll take it.
I got my first perfect… loss. 0 for six. Won once so far. Welcome to C division, indeed.
1. Rain is probably best known in North America for starring in Ninja Assassin and co-starring Speed Racer. Since I don’t know any other K-Pop singer/actors this was a fairly easy answer.
2. Spent some time thinking about a name that was in the back of my mind but then I gave up and rather than leave it blank just put IBM.
3. Hans Gruber is the gimme name for me in this list. An easy 0.
4. Knew Peter Pan was one of them and had to guess at a second. I don’t know what made me think of South Pacific but I was pleased to have it turn out correct.
5. Went with Lebron James (as did the majority of us non-sports fans).
6. Put Bad Thursday.
Win by forfeit. 6(4)-F
Q2: My first thought was, “I have no idea, but at least it’s something I should be expected to know, so my opponent will probably waste his 0 on this one.” But then I noticed the text “SYSTEM/360″ in the center of the card and remembered that was the name of an old IBM mainframe. Success! Unfortunately, I was so excited that I figured it out, it failed to occur to me that IBM was also the most obvious guess for someone who didn’t know the answer, so I gave my opponent 2 points for this. (And of course, he did put his 0 there.)
1: I struggled with this one for a minute, because I knew I had seen him on Colbert segments, but I couldn’t pull his name. I was pretty sure it was a one-syllable English word that was not a “common” name, and somehow stumbled into answering “Ran”. I actually e-mailed the Commissioner to let him know that my answer was a stunning coincidence and not just a typo, in case he might be inclined to rule in my favor in the latter case. (I did not get credit.)
2: Put me down as another person who had no clue, but guessed IBM.
3: I might not have gotten this a year ago, but for some reason Hans Gruber has kept coming up on several podcasts I listen to. (I’ve only seen bits and pieces of the Die Hard movies.)
4: Put down Peter Pan without hesitation. (“Starring the late Mary Martin. And the late Cathy Rigby. And the late Sandy Duncan. And the late …” /mst3000 ) Then I struggled. I finally thought of the movie of South Pacific, with Mitzi Gaynor. That seemed like a close enough actress-character match to be a reasonable guess, and so I squeaked this one out.
5: Was not going to get this, no way, no how. Put down Bryant just to have something in the blank.
6: It was kind of nice knowing that the answer was Something Thursday, because I had never heard such a title. Put down Thirsty Thursday.
PrestemonE and I both defended perfectly, but alas, he knew everything I did, plus Durant. 4(4)-2(3) loss.
(Well, okay, it was my two points on the Mary Martin question that really gave him the win, not my zero on basketball, but let’s not split hairs.)
1. Had no chance on this one; never heard of him, never heard him. Made a lame attempt for a best answer.
2. Most likely answer=IBM. Got it.
3. Hans Gruber made this easy.
4. My wife is distantly related to Larry Hagman (Hagman is her mother’s maiden name), so she must be related at least by marriage to Peter Pan. Took a few moments to come up with South Pacific.
5. As a Seattle-area resident, I am painfully aware that Durant is reaching the pinnacle AFTER the team that drafted him was sold out to an inferior city and place by the traitorous combination of Howard Schulz and some combination of OKC forked-tongue businessmen. And while we are at it, let’s hang our heads a little bit in sadness for the Portland Trailblazers, who passed on Kevin Durant for the broken Greg Oden, just as they had passed on Michael Jordan in favor of Sam Bowie so many years ago. It’s like the curse of the Bambino revisited. Just for good measure, Brandon Roy, whose play may have convinced the Blazers to draft a big man instead of the similar-in-play Durant, breaks down, and a promising team evaporates. Lamarcus Aldridge is not enough.
6. I have been quite a Steinbeck fan. Family ties are in the same region of California Steinbeck was from. So I’ve read most of Steinbeck’s work many, many years ago (I have never and likely never will read Cup of Gold or The Moon is Down), so I’m a little leery to make this recommendation–I once took my wife, before we married, to a showing of A Boy and His Dog, telling her I’d seen it a few years before and liked it, and squirmed through two hours of Harlan Ellison’s pretension and misogyny (Escape From New York was blessedly goofy-stupid as the second half of the bill; oh, come on, Snake Pliskin AND Harry Dean Stanton as “Brain”l)–BUT, Sweet Thursday is my favorite read of the Steinbeck novels. It’s obviously not his most significant, and you gotta read Cannery Row first, but I remember Sweet Thursday as being a sweet read. I got this one.
Kissed my sister.
A merciful gimme in a season that to date has not offered a lot of them.
Just goes to show. For me, Boyle’s Law was a gimme. Were I playing, I might have remembered why the name Hans Gruber rang a bell.
Oops, wrong quote. I meant A bewilderingly easy gimme in a season that to date has had hardly any of them.. :-)
I don’t know if the IBM question would be a gimme for me because the photo isn’t linked.
I misread the punch card question at first, and was so pleased when “Hollerith” popped out of my brain. Luckily, did reread it and figured it had to be IBM.